Hysteria is anti-useful: food safety edition.
I know you’ve gotten one of the email forwards:
“It’s the end of the world! Organic farmers will all go to prison! It will be illegal to garden in your own backyard!”
Well, let me just tell you, that’s ridiculous. That kind of absurd scare-mongering only makes it easy for lawmakers to dismiss the people with real concerns about several food- and farm-related bills in congress right now.
Food and Water Watch has a good summary of the situation here.
The bottom line: Don’t get hysterical. Do call your senators and congresspeople. Do tell them you’re concerned about the effects of food-safety regulation on small farms. Tell them it’s important for any legislation to take into account the different needs of different kinds of farms. And while you’re at it, tell them they need to outlaw the dangerous and unsafe factory farming methods that brought us things like E. Coli hamburgers.
The Organic Consumers Association says this: “write to Congress to urge it to enact food safety legislation that addresses the inherent dangers of our industrialized food system without burdening certified organic and farm-to-consumer operations.” Makes sense to me.
